ABOUT THE CONFERENCE:The Event changes everything. And yet we have difficulty defining theevent. How do we theorize the transitory? As community members, we markevents with ceremonies of celebration and mourning. As scholars, westrive to leave our critical mark. Ultimately we must ask ourselves, dowe mark the event or does the event mark us?

In celebration of our conferenceâ€™s 20th Anniversary, we are interested inexploring methods and consequences of Marking the Event. We seek tolocate remarkable events in narratives of all kinds, from the textual tothe digital, from the literary to the historical. Is our experience ofan event limited to anticipation and retrospection? Is the event simplya way to mark time, to give the infinite an origin and an endpoint? Howdo we map the temporal geography of an event? Our abilities to makemeaning are often dependent on our ability to order events. But whathappens to this ability when marking itself becomes the eventâ€"when markerand event, signifier and signified, merge?

We are interested in the politics that determine how events are marked ordenied. Do our habits of marking sustain or neutralize the event? Someevents are read as destructive, some as productive. Where do we locatechange and how do we mark the New? What position do we occupy when weendeavor to mark?

We encourage abstracts that explore the concept of Marking the Event froma wide range of fields and disciplines. Topics may include butcertainly are not limited to:

ABOUT THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER:We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be MichaelWarner, Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University.Professor Warnerâ€™s research and teaching interests range from earlyAmerican print culture to public sphere theory to queer theory. Hisscholarship investigates how social movements emerge from print and othermedia. His current project addresses secularism today through a study ofearly American culture up to the Civil War. Professor Warner is theauthor of The Letters of the Republic (Harvard University Press, 1990),Fear of a Queer Planet (Minnesota Press, 1993), American Sermons (Libraryof America, 1999), The Trouble With Normal (Harvard University Press,2000), and Publics and Counterpublics (Zone Books, 2002). He has alsoedited The Portable Walt Whitman (Penguin, 2003) and has co-edited TheEnglish Literatures of America (Routledge, 1997).